A－live
by Mandolina Lightrobber
Summary: Take one resurrected Thief King, a piece of modern technology, and you've got a disaster on your hands. Citronshipping. Sort of. /Thief King Bakura, Malik Ishtar/


**A/N:** For Sierra who requested this pairing back in 2007 or something around that time.

**Disclaimer:** Kazuki Takahashi and all associated companies are the rightful owners of the Yuugiou! franchise and I claim no association with any of them. No copyright infringement intended with this and no money is being made from this. Please support the creator by purchasing the official releases.

**Warnings:** worksafe.

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><p><strong>A-live<strong>

Being summoned back to life three thousand years after one's time wasn't exactly a walk through an oasis. It was more like taking a swim in the River in Sobek's presence. As far as the great Thief King Bakura was concerned, the future was chock full of powerful magic. Currently, he was staring down a powerful item called a Computer, trying to figure out what sort of spellwork kept it together.

"What sorcery is this?" he muttered low, prodding the strange hieroglyphs on the horizontal plaque, watching with awe how they sunk in and formed matching, much smaller hieroglyphs on the adjacent vertical plaque under the clear glaze. If there was one thing he knew for sure, it was that glaze was applied only after the writing had been engraved into clay and burnt to hardness. Here, he was witnessing the act in reverse: the hieroglyphs could be changed, erased, moved all around, and written on top of without doing any damage to the plaque itself.

Malik, tasked with keeping an eye on him while they figured out how to send the thief lord back to his own time without disrupting the flow of time and changing the past events, was currently standing in the doorway and observing the peculiar scene. It just had to be that a group of amateur Egyptian archaeology buffs actually managed to pull off a successful resurrection act over the mummified corpse of an unknown male found buried inside a collapsed cave of a collapsed village. And the village just had to be the remains of Kul Elna. And the corpse just had to belong to Bakura's past self. Though this Bakura was nothing like the Spirit of the Ring; this had become clear early on. Sighing, Malik took a step forward into the room.

"What are you doing?" he asked, arms crossed.

Bakura looked up, startled for being caught in the act, but still maintaining the air of someone who didn't hold other's opinions in high regard. In his eyes, Malik was a sorcerer and even though the latter had explained time and time again about the way items worked now, it didn't matter to the Thief King. The situation wasn't helped any with the fact that the imprint the Sennen Rod's power had left on Malik was still powerful and the trace hadn't yet disappeared; it probably never would. Bakura, familiar with his Ring and the ways it worked, had learned to tell the presence of other items in everything they had touched, even if for the briefest of moments. He still thought that Malik was just hiding them from him, even if he had explained that they were lost for good. He refused to believe that and kept insisting that they would be coming back through sand and stone the same way he had.

Sometimes Malik would look up and locate the thief with his gaze, only to find that the other was observing him closely, veiled mistrust and hesitant curiosity equal parts with calculating intent and trickery in his eyes.

Suddenly mortified, Malik paused mid-step, his gaze locked on the open document. "Are those Ishizu's monthly accounts of her museum work?"

He didn't need to hear the answer which Bakura wasn't even going to give; he already knew that they were. Ishizu had only stepped out of the living room for a few minutes to locate some papers which she kept in her room, leaving the computer on, and the disaster had already struck. Dread building in the pit of his stomach, he rushed forward to check on her work, in a hurry to erase any changes Bakura might have done, but to no avail. The calculations she had spent the past two hours on were gone. Sections of text had been replaced by jumbled letters, numbers and symbols.

"You've ruined it!" Malik groaned, realising how futile his efforts were. No amount of 'Undo' could bring back the original text.

"I have done no such thing!"

Twisting his head to glare at the self-proclaimed thief lord, he found that the other already had one foot out the door.

"Oh, no, no, no! You get back here and fix it!" he demanded, rising to his feet.

Bakura glanced back over his shoulder and frowned. Giving the computer a quick once-over, he shrugged indifferently. "Fix? It does not appear broken to me."

For a moment Malik could only gape at him and the way he sauntered away, without a care in the world, about to cause another disaster somewhere else. Then he remembered that Ishizu would probably have his head on a platter for her ruined work and hurried after him to try and attempt a murder on the off chance that it might be the last thing he did in his life. Giving it a second thought, he decided that murder was a nice, safe alternative to sending him back in time without consequences – or trying to undo the spell which had summoned him in a way that would put him to an eternal rest.


End file.
